Modern Times: Temporality in Art and Politics

Description

In this book Jacques Ranciere radicalises his critique of modernism and its postmodern appendix. He contrasts their unilinear and exclusive time with the interweaving of temporalities at play in modern processes of emancipation and artistic revolutions, showing how this plurality itself refers to the double dimension of time. Time is more than a line drawn from the past to the future. It is a form of life, marked by the ancient hierarchy between those who have time and those who do not. This hierarchy, continued in the Marxist notion of the vanguard and nakedly exhibited in Clement Greenberg's modernism, still governs a present which clings to the fable of historical necessity and its experts. In opposition to this, Ranciere shows how the break with the hierarchical conception of time, formulated by Emerson in his vision of the new poet, implies a completely different idea of the modern. He sees the fulfilment of this in the two arts of movement, cinema and dance, which at the beginning of the twentieth century abolished the opposition between free and mechanical people, at the price of exposing the rift between the revolution of artists and that of strategists.

Jacques Ranciere is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris-VIII. His books include The Politics of Aesthetics, On the Shores of Politics, Short Voyages to the Land of the People, The Nights of Labor, Staging the People, and The Emancipated Spectator.

One of our most stimulating thinkers * Paris Match * Ranciere's writings offer one of the few conceptualizations of how we are to continue to resist. -- Slavoj Zizek It's clear that Jacques Ranciere is relighting the flame that was extinguished for many-that is why he serves as such a signal reference today. -- Thomas Hirschhorn His art lies in the rigor of his argument-its careful, precise unfolding -and at the same time not treating his reader, whether university professor or unemployed actress, as an imbecile. -- Kristin Ross French philosopher Jacques Ranciere is a refreshing read for anyone concerned with what art has to do with politics and society. * Art Review *